1. Technical Field
This invention is related to an image forming apparatus and a process cartridge.
2. Related Art
An image forming apparatus employing an electrophotographic method has been known as an image forming apparatus used in copying machines and printers that form color or black and white images.
In this type of an image forming apparatus, an image is formed on a recording medium by charging the surface of a photoreceptor by a charging unit; exposing the charged surface in an imagewise manner to form an electrostatic latent image on the photoreceptor; developing the electrostatic latent image with a toner to form a toner image; and transferring the toner image onto the recording medium directly or via an intermediate transferring unit. The surface of the photoreceptor after completion of transferring the toner image is charged again by the charging unit, and the aforementioned steps of forming an electrostatic latent image and a toner image are repeated.
In the image forming apparatus employing an electrophotographic method, there is a problem of incurring an image defect, so-called ghosting, which is an appearance of an exposure record formed at the previous image formation process on a newly formed image, caused by a charge remaining on the surface of the photoreceptor after completion of transferring a toner image.